The Pittsburgh Penguins, contrary to credible reports earlier Friday, have not fired their coach. They did, however, fire Shero — and his replacement will determine the fate of Bylsma and the rest of the coaching staff, team CEO David Morehouse said Friday.

Dan Bylsma (AP Photo)

Jason Botterill, formerly Shero's top assistant, will serve as interim GM and is a candidate for the full-time job. The decision on Bylsma will be left to Botterill, or whoever permanently replaces Shero as the franchise's top hockey decision-maker, Morehouse said.

Pittsburgh has failed to advance to the Stanley Cup finals in the five seasons since they won in 2009. Shero, at least for now, has paid full price on what Morehouse called "underachivement" over that span, including earlier this week, when they wasted a 3-1 series lead against the New York Rangers.

That said, the team still has Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, so nothing is getting blown up.

"This isn’t a complete overhaul," Morehouse said. "We’ve had success during the regular season. We have a good team. It’s a lot different than a team that needs a complete overhaul and a revamping."

"No matter how well we did this year, we didn’t have that," Burkle said. "And it was something that had to be addressed."

The Penguins particularly struggled with a lack of quality players on the third and fourth lines. Part of that is because Shero opted to use last summer's cap space on defenseman Rob Scuderi. Part of it is because the franchise has struggled to draft and develop those sorts of players.

That has cap ramifications, as well: The best-built teams have at least a few players contributing on their entry-level contracts. Translation: Young and cheap.

"You can look at the draft and say what we did or didn’t do, but we’ve got forwards and d-men who we have drafted and didn’t always take advantage of them or done a lot with them," Burkle told Kovacevic. "So we have ended up with an older team."

"With a cap system, you can’t just have a bunch of senior people on the team. You can’t afford to."

And weird as the situation seems — Morehouse was asked as much Friday — it makes sense, on at least some level. The new hockey ops boss, whoever he is, will have an opportunity to evaluate the situation and proceed as he sees fit. If he wants to retain Bylsma, he should be able to argue his case.

Still, given the caliber of the reports that Bylsma had lost his job — TSN, the CBC, the Tribune-Review — this remains a strange situation.

Bylsma is under contract with the Penguins for two more years, and teams with existing coaching openings cannot contact him without permission. That means teams like the Washington Capitals and Vancouver Canucks, who would have strong interest in hiring Bylsma, may have to look elsewhere.

If those teams hire someone else over the next couple weeks only to see Bylsma eventually fired, they'll have lost — as will have Bylsma.

Still, it's tough to see the situation shaking out that way; it'd be borderline unprofessional, if not flat-out vindictive, and the Penguins have no interest in that — they think highly of Bylsma, and owe him too much. Lemieux told the Tribune-Review that there was "no chance" the Penguins would keep Bylsma from taking another job should they decide that they don't want him back in the fall.

In the meantime, Pittsburgh should be expected to pursue a veteran coach. Mike Babcock of the Detroit Red Wings remains the top prize for any team with a job opening, and he's a huge fan of Crosby's in particular, given their work with the Canadian national team.

The issues, and they're not small, are that Babcock has a year left on his contract, likes Detroit and will have his choice of jobs should he want a new one now or next season. According to Nick Cotsonika of Yahoo! Sports, Babcock and the Red Wings plan to discuss a contract extension soon.

Barry Trotz, formerly of the Nashville Predators, also seems like a fit, but he's a candidate for other jobs as well. His clock is ticking, even more so than Babcock's. If Pittsburgh wants its new hockey ops boss to hire him — or Babcock — they won't have an unlimited amount of time.

So, expect things to move either unpredictably or quickly — because a last-minute swerve appears to have taken place.